WALTHAM, Mass.—Pledging the continued growth of its human and environmental health portfolios, PerkinElmer Inc. in early May announced it will acquire Analytica of Branford Inc., a recognized pioneer and leader in mass spectrometry (MS) and ion source technology.

PerkinElmer will use Analytica's production facility in Branford, Conn., for mass spec R&D projects, which will be led by Craig Whitehouse, founder of Analytica. The facility's 30 employees will join PerkinElmer's team in Shelton, Conn. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Founded in 1987 by Whitehouse, who developed one of the first electrospray ion sources for MS at Yale University, Analytica released the first commercial electrospray ion sources in 1989 that were sold as retrofit ion sources for existing mass spectrometers and on an OEM basis to MS companies. After continuing to improve the technology for MS applications, Analytica became one of the first companies to develop atmospheric pressure ion source time-of-flight mass spectrometers with innovative ion sources and ion optics. These products are built on a unified, high-performance MS hardware and software platform.

Whitehouse said in a news release that the acquisition is "a wonderful opportunity to apply our outstanding applications and solutions to PerkinElmer's new and broader-end markets."

"We look forward to combining our resources to develop and provide applications that are critical to people and the environment," Whitehouse added.

The Analytica acquisition is actually the latest in a series of critical investments and partnerships intended to drive PerkinElmer's chromatography business, says Dr. Richard F. Begley, president of PerkinElmer Analytical Sciences. Other recent portfolio investments include the December 2008 acquisition of Arnel Inc., a move to expand PerkinElmer's application-focused expertise in the biofuels and hydrocarbon-processing industries; an agreement announced in February to become a reseller for Teledyne Tekmar's purge and trap automated sample concentration systems; and two product launches, first the Flexar LC/Chromera CDS platforms at Pittcon 2009, followed shortly by the release of SWAFER, a new micro-channel wafer technology platform for flow-switching applications in capillary gas chromatography (GC).

Now, with the completion of the Analytica acquisition, PerkinElmer will gain significant insight and intellectual property in the field of MS and ion source technology, complementing PerkinElmer's human and environmental health portfolio, Begley says.

"PerkinElmer Analytical Sciences is committed to being the global leader in application-focused measurement solutions to improve the quality of our environment, food, energy sources and new materials, for global and human health and well-being," Begley says. "Bringing Analytica's technology and team of highly innovative experts in-house will dramatically increase our capabilities to provide customers access to critical technologies such as time-of-flight and quadrupole mass spectrometers and new ion sources, that provide more complete information as well as provide better throughput."

Although PerkinElmer already offers high-performance GC/MS and ICP-MS, the acquisition gives the company access to a wider range of quadrupole and time-of-flight technologies for both GC and LC applications, Begley notes.

"Coupling Analytica products to PerkinElmer's high throughput Clarus 600 GC, high performance Flexar UHPLC, and next-generation Chromera Chromatography Data System will allow us to deliver superior chromatography systems to our customers," he says.

PerkinElmer's Analytical Sciences business will continue to pursue other strategic initiatives to broaden its environmental and human health portfolios, Begley says.

"Customers are demanding higher levels of productivity in terms of throughput and insight," he says. "Mass spec plays a key role in providing this capability. For human health applications, mass spectrometry provides an extremely detailed profile of medically relevant materials in drug discovery and molecular diagnostics. For environmental health, areas of applications include environmental analysis, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical materials analysis, forensics and food safety."